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Large blooms of tiny marine plants called phytoplankton are flourishing in areas of open water left exposed by the recent and rapid melting of ice shelves and glaciers around the Antarctic Peninsula. This remarkable colonisation is having a beneficial impact on climate change. As the blooms die back phytoplankton sinks to the sea-bed where it can store carbon for thousands or millions of years.

New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now. This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected. The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 should start to diminish as CO2 emissions increase, letting...

New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of CO2 has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of CO2 having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to...

Junk Science: The oracle of climate disaster has a new book out on global warming that should be on the fiction list. He asks us to commit economic suicide while he rakes in millions from his green investments. 'Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis," Al Gore's sequel to his 2006 tome "An Inconvenient Truth," came out Tuesday. Printed on recycled paper using low-VOC (volatile organic compound) ink, it will undoubtedly be a best-seller and on the desk of every attendee at next month's climate change conference in Copenhagen. In a press release announcing the book, the Oscar-...

Earth: An environmental writer mainstreams an idea floating around the green fringe — save the earth by population control and give carbon credits to one-child families. Are we threatened by the patter of little carbon footprints? New York Times environmental writer Andrew Revkin participated in an Oct. 14 panel discussion on climate change with other media pundits titled "Covering Climate: What's Population Got To Do With It?" People who need people they are not. In a recently rediscovered book, "Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment," co-authored with Malthus fans Paul and Anne Ehrlich, Holdren wrote that families "contribute to general social deterioration...

Public Discourse: Our energy secretary applauds and encourages companies to leave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over its position on climate change. Should any Cabinet secretary, with the powers of government behind him, be threatening U.S. companies? Part of the climate-change mantra is that the debate is over and the science is settled. Just to make sure, environmental groups have sought to pressure businesses to go green or at least keep silent. Now it would appear the whole weight of the federal government is being thrown behind this campaign to coerce and silence real and potential opposition. On Thursday, Steven...

<p>Global Warming: President Obama warns of planetary doom at the U.N. if we fail to pass cap-and-trade legislation. Meanwhile, a former warm-monger predicts decades of cooling as the sun stays nearly "spotless."</p> <p>The president had hoped to address Tuesday's United Nations climate change summit in New York with a finished cap-and-trade bill. Failing that, he hoped he'd at least have a version of the Waxman-Markey bill that has passed the House on his desk before the Copenhagen talks in December to cobble together a follow-up to the failed Kyoto Protocol.</p>

It's truly extraordinary how every left-of-centre journalist in the country has managed to become an instant expert on the arcane subjects of global warming and the science of climate change. Imagine, for example, if some average Canadian hack who had never studied the Middle East suddenly announced that he was an authority on Israel-Palestine, knew which side was right and knew how to solve all of the associated problems. This, however, is what we are told every day when it comes to the fashion of sounding green. The more sympathy we can exhibit for Al Gore's polar bear or David...

Climate: As alternate-energy champ Spain's green economy slides into recession, a German professor says if American "climate illiterates" don't follow, the Copenhagen climate conference will fail. And the bad news is? King Canute, the Viking king of England, Norway and Denmark, was the legendary king whose sycophantic followers praised his power and wisdom. As the story goes, he once stood on the shore and commanded the waves to halt. Rather than exercising his ego, he in fact was giving his followers a lesson in reality — the power of man over nature is finite and inconsequential. In December, the world's...

Global Warming: President Obama warns of planetary doom at the U.N. if we fail to pass cap-and-trade legislation. Meanwhile, a former warm-monger predicts decades of cooling as the sun stays nearly "spotless."The president had hoped to address Tuesday's United Nations climate change summit in New York with a finished cap-and-trade bill. Failing that, he hoped he'd at least have a version of the Waxman-Markey bill that has passed the House on his desk before the Copenhagen talks in December to cobble together a follow-up to the failed Kyoto Protocol. Not only did that not happen in the cool summer of...

Energy Savings: Europe's ban on the incandescent light bulb began phasing in this month, and the U.S. will soon follow. Is Thomas Edison to blame for global warming? And why are we exporting green jobs?When the warm-mongers assemble in Copenhagen this December to hammer out a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol, no doubt their work to save the earth from the carbon dioxide that gives it life will take place under the eerie light thrown off by compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) mandated by the European Union to fight climate change. The bulbs are more expensive, costing up to...

India's greenhouse gas emissions are expected to jump to between 4 billion tonnes and 7.3 billion tonnes in 2031 ... Per-capita emissions are estimated to rise to 2.1 tonnes by 2020 and 3.5 tonnes by 2030, according to a government-funded study by five different organisations, including environmental groups and the management consultancy firm, McKinsey. The report did not give a figure for present emission levels but Indian climate negotiators say per-capita emissions are 1.2 tonnes at present. India's population is 1.1 billion but is expected to grow to more than 1.5 billion in coming decades. The report is the nation's...

Book Review: The environmental movement has cultivated a warm and fuzzy public image, but behind the smiley-face rhetoric of "sustainability" and "conservation" lies a dark agenda. The Greens aim to regulate your behavior, downsize your lifestyle, and invade the most intimate aspects of your personal life. In this stunning exposé, Steve Milloy unveils the authoritarian impulse underlying the Green crusade. Whether they're demanding that you turn down your thermostat, stop driving your car, or engage in some other senseless act of self-denial, the Greens are envisioning a grim future for you marked by endless privation. Steve Milloy is the founder...

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected in the next few weeks to declare that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases are pollutants, a move that would require the federal government to regulate them -- even without legislation. Don't exhale. That advice may need heeding if the Environmental Protection Agency declares carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases dangerous pollutants, a move -- expected in the next couple weeks -- that would require the federal government to impose new rules limiting emissions. But some skeptics say regulating carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning fossil fuels, may be a difficult task,...

Don't Exhale. EPA Expected to Declare Carbon Dioxide a Dangerous Pollutant The Environmental Protection Agency is expected in the next few weeks to declare that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases are a pollutant, a move that would require the federal government to regulate them -- even without legislation. FOXNews.com Friday, August 28, 2009 Don't exhale. That advice may need heeding if the Environmental Protection Agency declares carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases a dangerous pollutant, a move -- expected in the next couple weeks -- that would require the federal government to impose new rules limiting emissions....

Junk Science: The EPA may be considering closing the watchdog office that exposed the flimsy evidence of man-caused warming. So much for the administration's promise to "restore science to its rightful place."Recently we commented on the plight of Dr. Allen Carlin, the EPA senior research analyst at the National Center for Environmental Economics who dared to say, in essence, that emperor Al Gore and his environmental sycophants at the Environmental Protection Agency wore no clothes. The EPA had been working on an "endangerment finding" that would say carbon dioxide, rather than being the basis for all life on earth, was...

Climate Change: NASA's James Hansen leads a protest against a District of Columbia power plant in the middle of a snowstorm. Meanwhile, a scientist fired by Al Gore says we need to emit more carbon dioxide, not less.Speaking before Bill Clinton's Global Initiative in New York City last Nov. 2, Gore advocated the concept of civil disobedience to fight climate change. "I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration," Gore said to loud applause. Following Gore's lead, a...

Pine trees grown for 12 years in air one-and-a-half times richer in carbon dioxide than today's levels produced twice as many seeds of at least as good a quality as those growing under normal conditions, a Duke University-led research team reported Aug. 3 at a national ecology conference.

Global Warming: If the rock stars who flew hundreds of thousands of miles in their jets to save the earth wanted to hug trees, they could have hugged the forest that once covered Greenland. We didn't see Sheryl Crow passing out single-sheet allotments of toilet paper to Live Earth concert-goers. But we did see perhaps the biggest-ever exercise in hypocrisy and futility as performers around the globe plugged in and amped up to save the earth from the climate impact of excessive energy consumption. John Rego, environmental director of Live Earth, insists the multi-continent charade, like the mansions of Gore,...

Climate Change: NASA predicts the lowest sunspot activity since 1928. Is a major solar storm in the offing? While we worry about man-made warming, the sun may soon show us who's boss... But this dry statistic has more significance for the earth and its climate than all of Al Gore's gloom and doom about tailpipe emissions and rising sea levels. Whether the warm-mongers like it or not, the sun rules earth's climate — always has and always will.

The price of coal and efforts to control its emissions keep energy costs spiraling higher. American Electric Power, parent of Appalachian Power Co., reports that it is "the largest purchaser of coal in the Western Hemisphere." For Appalachian, coal-fired power plants generate about 98 percent of the electricity it delivers to customers in a territory that includes portions of Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee. For AEP companywide, coal fuels about 70 percent of power generation. And all that coal, an increasingly controversial fuel, helps explain the upward spiral of Appalachian's costs for complying with environmental regulations. Appalachian and AEP report...

WASHINGTON – In a triumph for President Barack Obama, the Democratic-controlled House narrowly passed sweeping legislation Friday that calls for the nation's first limits on pollution linked to global warming and aims to usher in a new era of cleaner, yet more costly energy. The vote was 219-212, capping months of negotiations and days of intense bargaining among Democrats. Republicans were overwhelmingly against the measure, arguing it would destroy jobs in the midst of a recession while burdening consumers with a new tax in the form of higher energy costs. The House's action fulfilled Speaker Nancy Pelosi's vow to clear...

Climate Change: The EPA has prepared a finding for review that global warming is a public health threat, the first step toward regulating the American economy down to your lawn mower.We are often told how the pursuit of alternative energy will help save the earth from climate change and create lots of green jobs. Advocates rarely use the phrase "global warming" any more because the earth is in fact no longer warming, and hasn't for a decade due to a decline in solar activity and other natural factors. They prefer the phrase "climate change" because it can cover a multitude...

Energy Policy: California regulators are ready to conclude that corn ethanol cannot help the state fight global warming. It seems they've discovered putting food in our cars would destroy the earth in order to save it. California regulators have apparently discovered it ain't easy being green. The California Air Resources Board began two days of hearings in Sacramento on Thursday on a proposed Low Carbon Fuel Standard which considers the carbon intensity of fuels during a given fuel's entire life cycle. The California Environmental Protection Agency apparently has concluded that corn ethanol would not help the state implement Executive Order...

On June 28, 2009, the House of Representatives, by a narrow margin (219-212), passed the Waxman-Markey bill. The so-called “cap and trade” bill has been sold as a system for cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the struggle against global warming. There’s a full-court press on the U.S. Senate to pass its version of “cap and trade”...The Obama administration’s EPA sees the increasing evidence against global warming as a threat to their agenda and has taken desperate measures. About a week before the House vote on “cap and trade,” the Washington, D.C.-based Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) released some EPA e-mails, demonstrating...

Climate Change: Supporters of economy-killing cap-and-trade legislation not only misquote the Congressional Budget Office's report lowballing the costs. They ignore how CBO cooked the books to get its numbers.We have often cited the CBO in our editorials. It's a nonpartisan entity whose staffers normally do a decent job analyzing data and crunching numbers. But as regards the true cost of climate change legislation, they have fallen victim to the computer-age trap: garbage in, garbage out. In recent weeks, ABC's "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos twice misquoted a CBO analysis of the Waxman-Markey bill that claims that we can save the...

Even a compromised agreement to reduce emissions could devastate the economy - and all for a theory shot full of holes, says Christopher Booker. What makes this even odder is that the runaway warming predicted by their computer models simply isn't happening. Last week one of the four official sources of temperature measurement, compiled from satellite data by the University of Huntsville, Alabama, showed that temperatures have now fallen to their average level since satellite data began 30 years ago...In March, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has a key role in President Obama's plans to curb CO2 emissions,...

The push for conversion to plug-in electric cars will do nothing to stop carbon emissions, a report by the GAO warns, throwing cold water on a push by Democrats to get more plug-ins on the road. In fact, the problem could be made worse as demand goes up at coal-fired electrical plants. Plus, the need for batteries may just have the US changing the dictators to which we’re chained, as IBD reports...

Alternative Energy: A government report says reliance on electric cars will do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and may merely shift our dependence on foreign sources from one set of dictators to another.It's a beautiful theory — highways full of electric cars emitting no greenhouse gases or pollutants after being plugged into an outlet in our garages overnight. The problem, according to a new Government Accountability Office report, is that the effort may only shift the problem somewhere else. "If you are using coal-fired power plants, and half the country's electricity comes from coal-powered plants, are you just trading...

Alternative Energy: A government report says reliance on electric cars will do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and may merely shift our dependence on foreign sources from one set of dictators to another..."If you are using coal-fired power plants, and half the country's electricity comes from coal-powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?" asks Mark Gaffigan, co-author of the GAO report. The report itself notes: "Reductions in CO2 emissions depend on generating electricity used to charge the vehicles from lower-emission sources of energy."

The well-placed and well-connected are set to make trillions off new climate bill; economic collapse about to accelerate The sweeping new bill which just passed the House last Friday, the Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 [2], is ostensibly about climate change, but it is in fact a bill of staggering economic ramifications that is going to accelerate the takeover of the economy by the well-placed financiers who have already plundered the Treasury and the Fed of $12+ trillion and counting [3]. It was rushed through the House in the tradition of such nightmarish legislation as the Patriot Act...

About 20,000 years ago — long before the first SUV — global sea levels were 400 feet lower than they are now. Sea levels were rising long before the Industrial Revolution and will likely continue to rise, just not at the cataclysmic rates predicted by computer models. All these prophecies of doom are based on computer models that are based on agreed-upon assumptions and fed a relatively small portion of the immense number of variables that affect weather or climate. Not all these variables are known or fully understood, which helps explain why these models can't even predict the past....

Climate Change: As a winter storm shutters D.C.-area schools, Al Gore does a show-and-tell on global warming before Congress. The road to Copenhagen is being paved with good intentions."When it comes to the weather, folks in Washington don't seem to be able to handle things," a joking President Obama told reporters Wednesday morning. Daughters Malia and Sasha had a snow day as the private school they attend, Sidwell Friends, closed due to a winter ice and snow storm. Truer words were never spoken. When it comes to weather, the current Democratic majorities in the nation's capital don't have a clue....

Climate Change: A switch of four Republican votes would have defeated Waxman-Markey, the Democrats' global warming legislation. But like the Clinton Btu tax, the bill could die in the Senate and turn the House over to the GOP. What were these RINOs thinking? The GOP is supposed to be the party of low taxes and free markets. Rep. Mike Castle, one of the eight offered an explanation right off of President Obama's teleprompter...Illinois Republican Mark Kirk, who has senatorial ambitions to replace the choice of impeached former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Sen. Roland Burris, demonstrates why GOP fortunes in the Land...

Climate Change: A suppressed EPA study says old U.N. data ignore the decline in global temperatures and other inconvenient truths. Was the report kept under wraps to influence the vote on the cap-and-trade bill? This was supposed to be the most transparent administration ever. Yet as the House of Representatives prepared to vote on the Waxman-Markey bill, the largest tax increase in U.S. history on 100% of Americans, an attempt was made to suppress a study shredding supporters' arguments.

Fiscal Policy: The House of Representatives is preparing to vote on an anti-stimulus package that in the name of saving the earth will destroy the American economy. Smoot-Hawley will seem like a speed bump.Not since a misguided piece of legislation imposed tariffs that turned a recession into a depression has there been a piece of legislation as bad as Waxman-Markey.The 1,000-plus-page American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) is being rushed to a vote by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi before anyone can seriously object to this economic suicide pact.

Fiscal Policy: The House of Representatives is preparing to vote on an anti-stimulus package that in the name of saving the earth will destroy the American economy. Smoot-Hawley will seem like a speed bump. Not since a misguided piece of legislation imposed tariffs that turned a recession into a depression has there been a piece of legislation as bad as Waxman-Markey. The 1,000-plus-page American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) is being rushed to a vote by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi before anyone can seriously object to this economic suicide pact. It's what Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security,...

I've been trying to grasp for a truth that is so obvious that all of us know it. But it's not a polite truth, so we don't talk about it. Yet I think it's important to say it out loud, because it is a truth that haunts our national discourse. As a nation we are under the thumb of idiots. Not just indoctrinated, or wrong-thinking, or power-hungry, or manipulative, or even malevolent people. No, I mean real lowbrows, people who constantly fall for really stupid ideas. Neanderthals. (Look at the Governor of California just running the state budget into the...

"CEI Releases Global Warming Study Censored by EPA Public Shouldn’t Be Kept in the Dark by an Agency Supposedly Committed to Transparency" by Richard Morrison June 25, 2009 Washington, D.C., June 26, 2009—The Competitive Enterprise Institute is today making public an internal study on climate science which was suppressed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Internal EPA email messages, released by CEI earlier in the week, indicate that the report was kept under wraps and its author silenced because of pressure to support the Administration’s agenda of regulating carbon dioxide.

Fiscal Policy: The House of Representatives is preparing to vote on an anti-stimulus package that in the name of saving the earth will destroy the American economy. Smoot-Hawley will seem like a speed bump...As we've said before, capping emissions is capping economic growth. An analysis of Waxman-Markey by the Heritage Foundation projects that by 2035 it would reduce aggregate gross domestic product by $7.4 trillion. In an average year, 844,000 jobs would be destroyed, with peak years seeing unemployment rise by almost 2 million. Consumers would pay through the nose as electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket, as President Obama once...

A piece of legislation is before the U.S. House that could drive up your electricity bill by 47 percent. The proposed bill would put a cap on carbon dioxide emissions output for all electricity companies. As part of a national effort alerting rate-payers, Grand Valley Power is sending a letter to their customers. they know their customers are hurting in this economic climate, and urges them to speak up.

Critics of the tea parties held in April noted that participants lacked a common theme. They carried signs dealing with a variety of issues making it difficult for simple minded critics to understand what was going on. Critics don't understand that protesters felt that government wasn't interested in them except as a source of funds for government programs that sometimes have little or no apparent value. The original Boston Tea Party had a specific theme - a symbol of what colonists felt was wrong. Colonists were tired of people an ocean away making decisions without considering their input. The new...

Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) is the most comprehensive objective compilation of science on climate change ever published. It offers a “second opinion” to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in 2007. Unlike that report, Climate Change Reconsidered finds global warming is not a crisis, and never was. Principal findings of the book include the following: Climate models suffer from numerous deficiencies and shortcomings that could alter even the very sign (plus or minus, warming or cooling) of earth’s projected temperature response...

Enlarge ImageSomeday solution. Fiddling with atmospheric pressure may be one way to prevent a future apocalypse. Credit: Photos.com Sometime between 100 million and 1 billion years from now, Earth will have lost so much carbon dioxide from its atmosphere that plants and trees will literally begin suffocating, eventually taking all life with them. In a new study, researchers propose one way to delay this Armageddon: reduce the pressure of the atmosphere, effectively creating conditions where we all feel like we're living at high altitudes. Over the geologic history of Earth, CO2 levels in the atmosphere have been dropping. Today,...

US Energy Secretary Steven Chu says the US will not be able to cut greenhouse emissions as much as it should due to domestic political opposition. Prof Chu told BBC News he feared the world might be heading towards a tipping point on climate change. This meant the US had to cut emissions urgently - even if compromises were needed to get new laws approved. Environmentalists said Prof Chu, a Nobel physicist, should be guided by science not politics. The American political system is in the throes of a fierce battle over climate policy. President Barack Obama says he wants...

Much has been written about the Insight, Honda’s new low-priced hybrid. We’ve been told how much carbon dioxide it produces, how its dashboard encourages frugal driving by glowing green when you’re easy on the throttle and how it is the dawn of all things. The beginning of days. So far, though, you have not been told what it’s like as a car; as a tool for moving you, your friends and your things from place to place. So here goes. It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing...

By Marc Morano - Climate Depot - May 4, 2009 Washington, DC - NASA scientist James Hansen, perhaps the most vocal voice in the U.S. warning of a man-made global warming crisis, has declared he hopes Congressional efforts to pass a cap-and-trade climate bill fail. "I hope cap and trade doesn't pass, because we need a much more effective approach,” Hansen said during a keynote lecture at Columbia University's climate conference on May 2, 2009. Hansen urged Congress to “abandon cap-and-trade initiatives altogether and implement a simple carbon tax instead” according to a May 4, 2009 article titled "Hansen hopes...

Washington—In an unprecedented act, the Environmental Protection Agency is now urging people to stop breathing. After ruling on Friday, April 17, 2009, that “carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydro fluorocarbons, per fluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride have now reached unprecedented levels,” they feel it necessary to protect as many citizens as possible from the dangers of greenhouse gases that affect public health. The agency also finds that climate change, created by these gases, have additional impacts on the environment, including but not limited to:

Contrary to a popular myth Al Gore and his followers are among the biggest enemies of the environment. Contrary to their lies carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant. CO2 is essential to biological life. The CO2 cycle is the basis of carbon based biological life. Plants are carbon structures and CO2 provides the carbon they need. Carbon is the second most common element in the human body. Humans and other animals get their energy from the complex carbon compounds plants produce. For example, each molecule of table sugar contains 12 carbon atoms. Plants are the original solar energy collectors....

WASHINGTON – As Congress begins to debate climate change in earnest, the science is taking a back seat to economics: How much will it cost to slow the Earth's warming because of man-made pollution — and what's the cost of doing nothing? With a key House committee starting four days of hearings, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., vowed to get a climate bill approved this year. Noting that Earth Day will be celebrated on Wednesday, she told reporters by the next Earth Day "we want to celebrate what we've done this year" to address climate change and clean energy. But the...